Category Archives: dyeing

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Thanks to Chris, (aka StoneyCharms) who reminded me that we had agreed to a silly self portrait day one day when discussing headphones or some such thing in the etsy forums. So here goes.

HA. Just kidding. Obviously. This would be the doofus cat that still calls my house home. SOMEDAY his real mama will come to reclaim him (hint-hint christine…). He just likes to wait until I’m slaying trolls in the Etsy fora to take advantage of the most expensive fabric in the house. (Don’t worry- this gets washed on hot about a dozen times during dyeing.)

Here- thanks to my hubs, is my “discharging” get up. Sometimes you just gotta take the color OUT of something, and that throws off some really nasty fumes. I do it outside (hence the outdoor shot) with my hot plate and a “table” made of sawhorses and buckets and so on. Not something you want to dress up for. Generally- this would be done in one of the many multicolored (aka dyesplashed) shirts and crocs. and grubby pants or pjs. But we just amae back from a day out with the kids- so I threw the garb on for the modeling session in front of the hydrangea. FYI: That hydrangea is FULL of bumblebees…..

Anyhoo- that’s me. Last time I was out doing this- in my driveway- every dog walker and kid walker happened to decide to go for a stroll by my house that day. Trust me- It wasn’t pretty and I secured my place as the nuttiest on the block.

Now that we’ve looked at that- let’s look at the cute…

Yes- that’s the asshat cat from above, looking cute so that I still feed him every day. There are two others in the house- but they are a little more camera shy.

After the “weekend of stupid mistakes” I thought I’d soothe my soul with a little “abstract” batik. Sometimes it’s nice to just throw some wax. Splatter, dribble, brush, and yes throw the wax. My basement wall is a mess now

I was starting to pontificate over how I’ve come around to liking art that isn’t just the realist painters, and so on, but it was getting too heady and stuffy sounding. Dang it, I just like color. And sometimes it’s just fun to play with color in whatever way strikes you. Monday, I just wanted to play with the colors, and see what happened. The result is below.

There was a vague plan for this scarf. It’s a little lighter than what I wanted, but that’s because I accidentally baked it. Etsy friends….see thread here. And clearly- it didn’t burn. I think the smell was the wax. I also don’t think the oven was on as long as I thought. Anyhoo… here’s the blue version : (The light is not great, I haven’t really futzed around with color correction because I wasn’t shooting this for the shop. Just to share with you all.)

And all stretched out:

I had fun. There was ego soothing over my public goofing up my other scarf with such newbie type mistakes. This one didn’t get burnt to a crisp. (though it was pretty dark when I unwrapped it). Happy little dyer I am! Sometimes it’s just fun to throw some wax.

While I’m not a lifelong dyer, I have been doing this long enough and intensely enough over the last few years that the mistakes that are about to play out were pretty dumb. As much I’d like to blame it on the late night, which is the only time I can really work on these things, this really was more a combination of impatience, inattention to detail, and yeah, alot of fatigue.

Okay, that said…onward to the branch disaster… (if you haven’t- read the post that leads up to this here: )

The scarf was batiked, and the background sprayed with pale to deep rosey pink dye. Since it is silk, I’m sticking with acid processing. Sounds scary but it just means the PH of the dye is acidic -I use citric acid crystals. There were 2 colors of concentrated dye stock, and a big bottle of acidic water for me to mix them with. When steamed, it will render the colors permanent.

For the branches, I grab bottle of black silk dye. I have used this kind of dye with the other backgrounds before, and it has worked fine, since it is essentially an acid dye. I dilute the black, do a few test strokes on some other silk, and I’m good to go.